More action, yay! Thank you all so much for the reviews! The facts in this story may all be untrue, since I really have no idea, but I tried my best. Feel free to correct me! Sorry for the constant repetition, too. Oh, and sorry this is a shorter chapter ^^

"I hate having to do this again," Tony muttered, looking over McGee's shoulder. McGee huffed in agreement. "If only…"

"It's her business, Tony," McGee snapped, effectively cutting him off and keeping the senior agent quiet. Tony had the right of mind not to retort sharply.

However, he then pointed out, "Well, this is, too."

"We already know all this."

"Then why do we need to do this again?" Tony pressed, referring to the background check they were currently conducting on Abby.

"Boss doesn't believe us!" McGee had to bite his tongue to keep from yelling. The senior agent rubbed his forehead with his palm in exasperation. They both wanted the answers and they wanted them now, but it didn't appear as if they were getting them any time soon.

As if voicing those thoughts, Tony asked, "What are we going to get from doing this that we didn't before?" His voice was dripping with hatred that he didn't attempt to hide or dull. Not towards anyone in particular, but towards the screen that was displaying things best kept personal. It was such an invasion of privacy. One could not base a friendship on deceit.

"Maybe something we overlooked?" McGee suggested hopefully.

"Or perhaps something that was once meaningless?" Ziva's voice called. Both men turned their heads to see their teammate entering the bullpen and dropping her bag and coat behind her desk, looking at the two of them curiously. "Have you found anything relevant?" she inquired.

"No," McGee said, his voice losing the hopefulness it had moments ago.

"It has to be someone that would know her whole family," Tony started.

"It has to be personal," McGee added. Ziva joined them, silent as a snake, and looked over McGee's other shoulder. When she too confirmed that there was nothing of interest, at least not yet, she sighed lightly.

Then, something occurred to the Israeli woman. "When we had takeout a few days ago, she mentioned she had a letter to attend to, yes?"

"So?" Tony pressed.

"So, since when does Abby get letters?"

McGee's eyes widened just a little as he turned around in his chair to look at the two agents breathing down his neck. "She gets everything by email…" he let his voice trail off.

As if by an unspoken order, they collectively stood and walked to the elevator that would lead them down to Abby's lab. Thankfully for the impatient trio, the elevator arrived quickly and they pushed themselves in hurriedly. At least Gibbs wasn't there; he'd have scolded them for their obvious eagerness. It was, however, their first possible lead to the whereabouts of one Abigail Sciuto, who had apparently gone missing the night before.

The seventeen seconds seemed to the agents an eternity. When it came to kidnap cases, with every passing hour, the chances that the victim would come out of it alive were slimmer and slimmer. They were unable to even imagine what life would be like, personally and professionally, if Abby were lost to the hands of fate. In fact, they couldn't even stand on steady ground in claiming that she had been kidnapped, which was horrifying on its own. To think that she'd just run away was a sickening thought, but one that remained and refused to leave, nonetheless.

The hush was abruptly broken as the elevator dinged at the forensics floor and opened, allowing the three to make their way out. A quick swipe from McGee's card and the lab allowed them to enter without so much as a hesitation.

"Why didn't we think of this sooner?" McGee angrily voiced the thoughts that they were all currently sharing. It wasn't until they broke apart to search individual sections of the lab that Tony called out a plausible reply.

"Because we didn't suspect Abby," he said, and he didn't sound too happy to hear it hanging in the air between them either. It, however, was the raw truth, as much as they all hated to have to acknowledge it. They never suspected Abby would have triggered something to provoke such a brutal attack on her family and her well being. After all, how could innocent, carefree, bubbly Abby have done anything so terrible as to spark acts like this?

Ziva was the one to find the letter, stashed away in one of the drawers at Abby's desk. She called the two men over as she donned some latex gloves, in case the sender had left any fingerprints, though she knew it was futile. Abby was the forensic specialist, and she must have already dusted for fingerprints or any traces that might allow her to track the letter. Disturbed, maybe, but outright dumb, Abby was not.

McGee and Tony were at her side in moments while she carefully dug out the letter so as not to rip any indications of the currently anonymous and suspicious sender. After all, the envelope had only written, "To Miss Abigail Sciuto" and absolutely nothing else. Not a stamp, not a return address, the only other visible thing on that damn envelope was the seal that had signs of being previously removed, most likely by Abby herself.

They found the same aspects of the letter that Abby had. It held only a plain piece of paper, with plain ink typed onto it, and nothing else hidden in the letter along with it. Tony let out a small sigh of relief when they discovered only the letter. There was no mysterious pesticide to nearly kill them from the inside out this time around, at the very least. Ziva and McGee quietly shared his thoughts as Ziva unfolded the letter and opened it.

Their eyes skimmed through the brief letter, filled with words of venom and malice that could be felt, even though it wasn't directed towards them. The letter was cruel and vile, and how anyone could write such a thing to their lovable lab rat chilled them. This person was capable of such a hatred towards Abby, of all people, that he went so far as to murder her brother, and from this they could deduce that he held the ability to do much worse. This fact was just assumed, but it made sense, and another puzzle piece clicked snugly into place. The man who wrote this scared them and they knew that whoever sent this had to be their guy. They were scared for Abby, scared for her family, and scared for themselves a little bit, too.

McGee gulped uneasily and pointed out with a shaky finger, "He implies that he was in the hospital, too."

"Is that where he met Abby?" Tony wondered aloud.

"Is this the reason behind Abby's disappearance?" Ziva also asked.

"Abby wouldn't let herself be fazed by a psycho to the point of suicide like this guy wants," McGee said confidently. "Besides, we didn't find any evidence of even an attempted suicide at her house. Nothing was misplaced, missing, bloodied, nothing. She's alive, and out there somewhere."

"It's the somewhere part I don't like," Tony said.

"Ditto," McGee mumbled.

"Likewise," Ziva said softly, mildly surprising the two men with the fact that she got the phrase right.

Then McGee remembered Tony's pondering and supplied a response. "I doubt this is how he knows her. Abby has no previous medical records of her being admitted to the hospital for any reason before being poisoned."

"Wait, so this nut job poisoned her, and knew she was in the hospital, knew when she got out, and sent her this?" Tony nearly shouted, gesturing to the piece of paper clutched in Ziva's gloved hands.

"It appears that way," she said glumly.

"He doesn't visibly threaten her to keep quiet," McGee pointed out, forcing himself to read the letter over again. "He's made contact with her before this."

"Or it was her own choice," Ziva said.

"I doubt that, too. Abby doesn't usually keep things directly relevant to a case from us," McGee responded, putting the idea that Abby was setting this up to ease. It just wasn't even remotely close to the realm of possibilities here.

"He's got her scared," Tony mentioned.

"Poor Abby, she must have been suffering since Sean was murdered," Ziva said regretfully, sorry that she hadn't been able to do anything sooner. Her teammates felt similarly.

"Is it possible that the hospital he's referring to is a mental hospital?" Tony suddenly questioned as the idea came to mind, getting them back on track. McGee nodded thoughtfully, and then looked down at the signature. Abby must have recognized it, but to them, it was foreign. It was signed by the initials "D.E." and that was all he wrote.

"I cannot recall Abby mentioning anyone by these initials," Ziva said, following McGee's gaze. Instantly McGee went to work, booting up Abby's computers and doing a search for anyone that matched the initials that may have been released from a mental hospital in the past year or so.

While he conducted his search, Ziva and Tony once again forcibly read the letter over. They gleaned no further hints from the letter, unfortunately. After all, they worked in NCIS, not in the Behavioral Analysis Unit of the FBI. It wasn't in their job description to have to profile an "unsub." All they could do was take what they could from the text itself.

For whatever reason, it occurred to Tony just then to contact Gibbs with their findings. He was currently stationed by Abby's house to see if anyone suspicious, or even Abby herself, came or went. Tony stood back and flipped open his cell phone, pressing the appropriate number to speed dial the guard dog that his boss had become. The ringing ceased in a few seconds, replaced by the voice of Gibbs.

"Gibbs," it announced.

"Hey, boss, we got something," Tony said softly as he put the phone on speaker, nearly being drowned out by the sounds of beeping from the computer, skimming the list of recent mental patients that had been released. So far, there were no matches, according to the monitor, but it still had a lot of names to sift through.

"Well, are you gonna tell me, DiNozzo?"

"Right, boss. Well, we found a letter in Abby's lab." He couldn't find the words to even begin to describe the content, so Ziva took the phone from him before Gibbs could start his berating.

"Gibbs, this letter is addressed to Abby. It is… very cruel," she said, not being capable of finding the correct words either.

Thankfully, Gibbs avoided the touchy subject and instead asked, "Has it been dusted for prints?"

Before Ziva or Tony could respond, McGee called out, "Yes, boss. Abby did it already. The findings were open on her computer when I booted it up. She found nothing."

"Why are you on Abby's computer?"

"The letter is signed by someone with the initials D.E. and McGeek is looking it up. Does it ring a bell?" Tony supplied.

"Can't say it does."

While Tony rattled off the hints they had managed to get from the letter, McGee continued his search. Just as Tony finished, the computer finished its scan as well and came up with four matching results. When Tony quieted, McGee interrupted.

"Got four possible matches," he announced, bringing their IDs up on the plasma. Ziva and Tony circled around to stand in front of the giant screen, Gibbs between them so he could listen in. "Delroy Etain, Daniel Evans, Donovan Ebber, and Dennis Eiden. All were recently released from mental hospitals here in D.C. Currently cross-referencing with Abby's files."

Ziva and Tony watched as things flashed across the screen that they couldn't even hope to understand. Words, pictures and newspaper articles filled the monitor for milliseconds before being replaced by other information. McGee seeded through it, first crossing Etain, and finding nothing, moving onto Evans. Anxiety clawed at their chests, even Gibbs, who couldn't see what was happening but could practically feel it. With the anxiety came a brief lull in speech, that was, until the computer finished its search of all four men. McGee analyzed the results and made his report.

"From this, Ebber apparently moved to New Orleans, where Abby grew up, at age sixteen with his father after his parents went through a messy divorce." McGee did a little more digging on Ebber, and then continued when he had more information to back him up. "His mother went missing after the incident and his father supposedly became an alcoholic. Ebber was home schooled in solitude, yes, by his drunken father, until age seventeen, where he started at the same high school Abby went to, in the same grade."

"That's how they met," Tony mused.

McGee went on. "After turning eighteen, apparently the grade had a sort of science fair in the second to last month of their senior year, where they presented individual projects for their final grade."

"Abby already knew what she wanted to do at that point, then," Ziva vocalized her thoughts.

"And it showed. The story goes she pointed out a huge mistake in Ebber's electricity project that cost him the final grade, and he had a mental breakdown and tried to attack her. He was suspended and during that time, he stole, murdered small animals, made constant threats, and became an alcoholic like his father. Apparently, he had been aspiring to be a forensic scientist as well, says his teachers and his father, while he was sober, and Abby's correction really got to him."

"Well there you go, black and white," Gibbs said. "Go get him."

A few more commands and Ebber, and only his, ID popped up on the screen. The man looked deranged, even in the snapshot. His hair was a dull muddy color and ragged, as if it had been cut clumsily with a kitchen knife. Scars littered his face from fights he had allegedly picked, not only with other people, but with himself from his own illusions. His eyes, looking infuriated with something beyond the camera, were a dark blue, closer to black or a darkish brown. A little facial hair finished off the look.

"Well, he's creepy," Tony announced.

Her feet had kept her going, despite the crippling conditions. At some point she had stopped, though where, when, and for how long had escaped her. All she knew was that hypothermia was probably setting in, and she just assured that the people she loved most in the world next to her biological family were in peril, and there was nothing she could do. She deserved what she was doing to herself, in her mind, and it was driving her to the point of illness. Though the cold was biting at her logical sense, and that also made her think strangely and act similarly.

Hypothermia was a definite risk as she trudged on, in the cold, wet and tired. The absence of civilian life told her she had wandered into a forest, perhaps, but her sight started to seem fail her. Though she could see everything, none of it registered in her mind, and it was irrelevant. Her mind failed to recognize the danger she was intentionally putting herself in, or the conditions that were starting to eat away at her sanity.

Coughs racked her body, but she never noticed the burning in her throat or chest, not even the violent noises or the small trickle of blood that had started from the corner of her mouth. Despite the fact that her lungs weren't bleeding internally, she was coughing so hard that she was starting to draw blood anyway. She was shivering violently, but that didn't mean anything to her, either. Her irregular footsteps across what must have been the forest floor, or her hands, desperate to hold something, shivering in their own grasp. Her body wasn't responding and she was confused and terrified, trapped inside a mind that was no longer hers, that controlled her physical movements and even her deepest thoughts.

Blueness tinted her skin in some areas, but it didn't make sense to her numbed mind. Her awkward, stumbling movements, nor the amount of times she toppled over but automatically stood up again. Desperateness crept up her spine but she kept going, regardless, unsure of where she was going. All were symptoms of hypothermia that was steadily getting worse from the remnants of the rain and the bitter cold. Her hands slowed and so did her body movements as she progressed down a path that she wasn't sure she wanted to take, but she'd never know.

Something was there with her the whole time, she knew that, but she ignored it. The matching footsteps it made, or the brief silences whenever she fell. It walked along with her, but it was just a figment of her imagination. It couldn't be real. The terror it was sparking in her, along with an added note of desperation, it all had to be fake, false. Something was wrong… very wrong… what happened? Suddenly she didn't know where she was, or even who. It all escaped her and she was reaching for something just out of her grasp. Nothing made sense, as if she were solving a math problem that had her stumped and, most of all, confused.

Then she dropped and her mind shut down completely as she faded into a world of cold oblivion where she knew nothing and felt nothing, yet it was all still there, all still real. The thing stopped too, crouching down to her level, its unmasked face a shadow. Gloves darted out and roughly grabbed her limp body from under her arms and dragged her up and took her away.